they're like oh, a bat kissed a turtle. >> david asher. people are laughing but he got a lot of heat for suggesting that last night, david. >> yeah, it's no laughing matter. he's right to poke holes and use his sense of humor to cast doubt in the way scientists handled this inquiry that dr. redfield says that they didn't do. they never looked at the origin. doesn't seem that anyone did that we did in the fall of last year. systematically looking at it. and i contacted cdc. i contacted nih. i asked for their data. cdc was the only one that was forthcoming. nih headquarters was not. so you know, i don't blame dr. redfield for saying it. he was on track. he remains on track and we need an investigation badly. >> martha: yeah. the bat lady doctor, dr. li says there was not covid-19 in her lab. but she -- she really would not be able to say anything other than or she would probably be shut down like the other scientists were. she said she can't believe that the world is pouring filth on an innocent scientist. your thoughts. >> we know from the i

is david asher.ve of that that was descended from i here is david asher. you have of. that that was descended from the province — that that was descended from the province that killed six or three miners — province that killed six or three miners and put three others in the hospital _ miners and put three others in the hospital is— miners and put three others in the hospital. is the first time a coronavirus transmitted, and that backbone — coronavirus transmitted, and that backbone was present. and totally bizarrely, — backbone was present. and totally bizarrely, it was a separate binder domain _ bizarrely, it was a separate binder domain like a penguin or an armadillo. how did they get together? but even more disturbingly, we found a human being. — disturbingly, we found a human being, humanised mice, and the arts of this— being, humanised mice, and the arts of this genetic combination coming together— of this genetic combination coming together is one of the millions by one national lab and another

i'll talk to david asher. he led that investigation.as trying to develop "super viruses." first, rich edson. hi, rich. >> good afternoon, martha. secretary state anthony blinken starting his second hearing of the day. the first featured questions on how the administration planned to secure an independent investigation in a country that refuses to grant one. officials say the key to discovering the origins of the pandemic is getting china's government to cooperate, provide access and data from the initial outbreak. more than 1 1/2 years into covid-19, there is little indication that will happen. >> what would the u.s. actually do if you pressured china to give access to the lab and if they don't grant that access? >> i can say with confidence there's going to be an increasing international demand that countries including china meet the responsibilities when it comes to providing information, access and transparency on global health, including covid. >> earlier this year, a world health organization associated team visited wuhan. china's

total nonsense. >> david asher writes in "the wall street journal" u.s.uld apply pressure against china's government and impose consequences for china is failing abide by international rules. share information about the initial outbreak. bret. >> bret: rich, thank you. are aliens flying around our world or not? american intelligence officials said they found no evidence that aliens are responsible for recent unidentified flying objects, ufo spotted by military pilots and others. but the same individuals also "cannot rule out the possibility of extraterrestrial involvement." what does that mean and where does that put us? this comes out a major report to congress expected this month. national security correspondent jennifer griffin here >> a new highly anticipated report about ufos says there is no conclusive explanation for more than 120 incidents of navy pilots reporting flying objects that seem to blow past the boundaries of cutting-edge aviation technology. senator marco rubio was one of those who inserted language into president trump's last spending

former state department advisor david asher helped write that fact sheet. >> i'm very confident that the military was funding a secret program that involved coronaviruses. i heard this from several foreign researchers who observed researchers in that lab in the military lab coats >> reporter: a leading researcher at the wuhan institute of virology insists it's only a civilian institution. she was questioned this year by a former national security official >> at the beginning of covid-19 we heard the rumors that it's claimed that in our laboratory we have some projects blabla with the army blabla, these kind of rumors but this is not correct. >> reporter: but nbc news has evidence the doctor herself has multiple connections with military officials. she and others collaborated with military scientists on coronavirus research in spring 2018 and with another military scientist in december 2019 in 2020 an article that scientist offered lists a footnote as deceased nbc has been unable to ascertain the circumstances of his death. the state department has repeatedly raised concerns over chin

. >> with some like david asher who ran the state department's investigation into the origins of thechina of negligence for not alerting the world sooner. >> we're talking lights out. there was no cooperation. and there is still no cooperation. >> reporter: so let's begin with an undisputed scientific fact. viruses are constantly emerging from nature. so when you look at this virus with your expertise, you see the workings of evolution and of nature. you don't see the hand of some diabolical scientist cooking up coronavirus? >> absolutely that just didn't happen at all. >> reporter: robert gary of tulane university is one of the world's leading virologists. >> look at the data a little closely. i think that most scientists and certainly most virologists have already done this will come to the conclusion that we're looking at a virus that comes from nature. >> reporter: gary argued the genetic code of the virus looks like the kind of thing that happens randomly in nature, not in lab. >> it's really nothing that any experienced virologist or even your worst graduate student would do. >

. >> here is what state department official david asher said about the bio weapons program. >> deliberatelyapability to use advanced pathogenic capabilities in a way that no one has seen ever employed, that is what the chinese have been talking about publicly. >> is the idea the covid was some sort of biological weapon being seriously considered? >> it is by republicans and that is something we have been questioning for many months and democrats again refused to hold any hearings. this hearing today was put on by republicans. we are not supposed to host hearings because we are in the minority. we have been calling on the democrats to hold a hearing on the origination of covid for months now and they refused to do anything so we took matters into our own hands and we had the most productive hearing, the evidence is overwhelming, china knew about this. it is almost overwhelmingly certainty that this originated in the lab in wuhan, the who complied with china to cover it up, the democrats did nothing to try to have american representation on the who and the american people need to know this. i

david asher, a senior fellow hudson institute.ent inquiry into the origins of covid that president biden shut down earlier this year. welcome back to our program and good morning to you. going to read this line. david -- peter is his name from britain. he sent this email in april last year. just wanted to say a personal thank you on behalf of our staff and collaborators for publicly standing up and stating that the scientific evidence supports a natural for covid-19 from a bat to human spillover, not lab release from the wuhan institute of virology. your comments are brave and coming from your trusted voice it will help dispel the myths being spun around the virus's origin and fauci responded. thank you for your kind note. so fauci dismissed this early on and pretty much said so publicly. how do we look back on that now 13 months later? >> he was right to dismiss it because seems to be working for some other power in some bizarre way. i don't have any proof of it but he was tweeting on december 31st of 2019 that this was coming ou

former state department adviser david asher helped write that fact sheet. >> i'm very confident thatviruses. i heard this from several researchers who observed researchers in that lab in the military lab coats. >> reporter: a leading researcher at the wuhan institute of virology insists it's only a civilian institution. she was questioned this year by a former national security official. >> at the beginning of covid-19, we heard the rumors that it's claimed that in our laboratory we have some projects blah blah with the army, blah blah, rumors. but this is not correct. >> reporter: but nbc news has evidence the doctor herself has multiple connections with military officials. she and others collaborated with military scientists on coronavirus research in spring 2018. and with another military scientist in december 2019. in fall of 2020, an article that scientist article lists him in a footnote as deceased. nbc has been able to ascertain the circumstances of his death. the state department has repeatedly raised concerns over china's compliance with the biological weapons convention. qu

last year david asher led the state department investigation into the origins of the virus. he's a senior fellow at the hudson institute and he joins us now. david, thank you so much for being with us once again today. you know, we're here looking back at world war ii. it's people on the front lines of understanding intelligence, understanding what is going on in other countries that have fought to keep us safe all of these years. i know that's what you're in the middle of trying to do. i want to play this from jen psaki when she was asked about gain of function research. watch this. >> dr. fauci said repeatedly, we never proved any funding for gain of research funding in wuhan. there was some approved in the prior administration. there was funding and how its approved through different nih programs. >> martha: is it true, david, that gain of function funding from the united states government has never happened in the wuhan lab or was never funded through those agencies? >> well, my investigation for the secretary of state and the national security council focused on the chin

former state department advisor david asher helped write that fact sheet. >> i'm very confident that military was funding a secret program that did involve coronaviruses. i heard this from several foreign researchers who observed and that lab in the military lab coats >> a leading researcher at the institute, she join the insisted it's only a civilian institution. she was question this year by jamie mention a summer security official. >> i'm speaking of covid-19. we heard the rumors that it's claimed that in our laboratory we have some projects with the army. these kind of rumors, but this is not correct. >> the nbc news has evidence that doctor she herself has multiple connections with military officials. she and others collaborated with the military scientists on coronavirus research in spring 2018. and another military scientist, joey senate december 2019 in a full 2020 article and that scientists authored a footnote as to seize. nbc has been unable to ascertain the circumstances of his death. the state department has repeatedly raised concerns over chinese compliance with biologi

. >> martha: that was david asher, one of the most respected scientists in the country. they're speaking out as house republicans push for the truth because we need to know what happened in order to stop this from ever happening again in this particular way. while democrats led by nancy pelosi are launching their own special select committee, theirs is on january 6. they have shown little interest in participating in the digging that is going on starting today on this virus on the hill, the virus that killed four million people around the globe and 600,000 americans, by the way. dr. fauci and dr. collins who say they were guided by science were invited to participate but they were not interested in being part of this or listening to what has been -- i listened to a lot of it this afternoon. really compelling testimony in that room. so republican congress woman nancy mace joins us with her thoughts on this. first, state department correspondent rich edson with the recap of what is going on. hi, rich. >> good afternoon. there's multiple investigations into the origins of t

. >> here's david asher that worked for the state department investigation talking about that back at of march. watch this. >> what we learned was so horrifying about the implications with what china is doing with viruses as a weapons vector, many people said viruses are not effective. look what happened to the world. >> so to what general kellogg just said, what china did, they shut down internal travel when they had a problem. they continued to let international travel go. they knew how contagious this was. so whether or not it came from the lab or accidentally on purpose, china made decisions to facilitate the spread of this virus around the world. they had to know the impact because they knew the impact internally. you can call that an attack. i do. china should be held responsible for that. over 600,000 americans killed. over three million citizens. if china accidentally released a nuke that killed 600,000 americans, what would our response be? would it be the same? >> what does the future look like, general kellogg with regard to bio weapons warfare and what are we doing to keep

he told fox news in a statement regarding this investigation that was headed by david asher and othersbc reporting to prove that wuhan institute of virology origin turned out to be junk science and evaporated. i was trying to protect pompeo and the trump administration says chris ford. sources tell me he stonewalled the investigation. >> i don't know the facts there. again we can spend too much time saying who did what when. what the e-mails indicated. you know frankly in the whole question of dr. fauci i have looked at reports. i can't say i read thousands of e-mails. there is no smoking gun there dr. fauci says something different on covid and the origins of the virus. >> john: chris, pause for a second. we want to jump to the white house. the skred is being asked about this. >> -- civil serve apartment, career civil servant overseeing management of multiple global health crises and attacks launched on him is not something we would stand by. i understand there are interests in the e-mails. he has answered questions on the e-mails. i don't have more to add on here. >> do you think the

. >> reporter: until five months ago, david asher headed a coronavirus task force at the stte departmentportant and persuasive. we needed to do deeper due diligence including the potential that it came out of a lab. >> reporter: when a group of scientists gathered by the world health organization went to the wuhan lab earlier this year, their access was limited. are those findings enough? >> no, those findings were completely inadequate. they were not scientific at all. they were not forensic. >> reporter: this lack of transparency rings true to condoleezza rice who was the white house national security adviser at the outset of the sars outbreak in 2003. >> we couldn't get answers from the chinese, and so if we're not going to keep repeating this problem, we're going to have to be a little bit more aggressive with the chinese about the need to cooperate. >> reporter: with nearly four million dead including over ovid-19 will comt professor pandemics. >> beerthe better we understand origins we can anticipate the origins of the next one. >> reporter: china's foreign ministry said criticism

former state department investigator david asher will testify today and joins us now. dr.to have you on. i want to put on the screen you will testify and admiral giroir, dr. richard mueller and dr. quay. in this forum with lawmakers what do you want the direction of this forum to be? >> i really want to focus on the designs and capabilities the chinese communist development developed around synthetic biology in the future warfare. i'm not it was released as an attack vector using biology but they were developing it secretly at the wuhan institute of virology and apparently got loose through an accident that has had -- we have to hold the chinese accountable. that's the focus. not a partisan issue. everybody should agree with this. >> trace: we hear we have to hold china -- sanctions and visa restrictions and relocating the olympics. is this enough in your estimation to compel the chinese to cooperate? >> probably not enough. we may never be able to compel them to cooperate. we may be able to coerce them. different than being a nice diplomat like i was trained to be. we can

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>> bill: david asher led the state department investigations into the origins of covid.on from beijing. >> the answer is pretty sincere. we'll get zero answers out of beijing in the future. if they were willing to cooperate they would have done so a long time ago because you would have thought if they didn't no exactly where this thing came from they would ask us for help to try to figure it out and the world community like they did in sars, mar, and avian flu. >> bill: china not trying to figure it out but nothing on what he will do to figure it out. what he will do. david. >> that's exactly right. i agree with josh. biden administration unless we adopt a much more coercive strategy unless we put on sanctions economically, civil litigation and other special measures against the chinese government i don't expect them to offer any cooperation. my experience with china, which is over three decades long, the coercion can work with china especially through the national system. their banks are totally dependent on the united states dollar for their existence. if we start to c

concerted effort to find out in the trump adminitration, there are currently analysts looking at it david asher also now with the hudson institute led the state department's investigation into this , so it can be across state department, dod and the ioc to find out what happens. we should also use our business community to put pressure on the ccp to find out what happens, what happened there and there should be ramifications. right now, this isn't good enough. a w. h. o. investigation isn't good enough and having the head of state from china say it didn't happen isn't good enough. >> interesting that you're looking at the business community to take a stand. they are happy to take a stand on racial injustice, but maybe they will take a stand on this , i don't know. the other thing the president is dealing with right now is he's looking into retaliation against those russian hackers. the doj is elevating cyberattacks to the level of terrorism so michael, do you think that maybe he should just cancel his meeting with vladimir putin, because i can't imagine that vladimir putin is going to be honest

former state department adviser david asher helped write that fact sheet. >> i'm very confident thathat did involve coronaviruses. i heard this from several foreign researchers who observed researchers in that lab in military lab coats. >> a leading researcher at the wuhan institute of virology, dr. xi jang lee insists it's only a civilian institution. she was questioned this year by jamie metzel, a former national security official. >> at the beginning of covid-19, we heard the rumors that it claimed that our laboratory we have some projects with the army, these kind of rumors, but this is not correct. >> reporter: but nbc news has evidence dr. xi herself has multiple connections with military officials. she and others collaborated with a military scientist on coronavirus research in spring 2018. and with another military scientist, zhou yusen, an article that scientist authored listed him in a footnote as deceased. nbc is unable to ascertain the circumstances of his death. >> and dr. anthony fauci will be our guest in a few moments. we'll be talking about that and all the other asp